


Real

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it's hard to get rid of the doubts</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr: http://joasakura.tumblr.com/post/25382986363/shepard-would-be-lying-if-he-said-it-weighed-on
> 
> from a fantastic image posted by haylen.

Shepard would be lying if he said it weighed on him every day since he woke up in that Cerberus lab.

When he kept busy, (he was able to pretend that) he completely forgot that he’d been a pile of what Jacob had called “meat and tubes” when they found him and that there so much tech in him that poor David Archer had been able to hack his brain.

(And he knew EDI had lied to him when she’d said his brain was 100% human, as much as he knew she lied as a favour to him.)

But, lying in his cabin, alone - that was when he ran out of distractions. Then it hit him. If he wasn’t having nightmares about those he couldn’t save, burning and clawing at his soul, he was lying awake, staring up at the stars, prodding at his memories and wondering if he really remembered scrabbling in bins for a few scraps of food, or if that was just something Cerberus had programmed into him.

It had hurt, worse than any bullet wound, when Kaidan had wondered what.. not who.. Shepard was. And selfishly he couldn’t help but wonder if his persistence in trying to bring Kaidan around was really just to reassure himself that he was real and not someone’s second-hand version of someone special.

Waking up in Kaidan’s arms - feeling him nuzzle the back of his neck in the dark and stroke his hip in absent, sleepy circles did wonders for that.

The videos EDI queued up in the Cerberus station were like a knife to the gut, and he wondered if she could understand how it made him felt, how it made him stammer and try to convince Kaidan and himself all over again that he was really John Shepard and…

“You’re real enough for me.” Kaidan cut him off, hand closing on Shepard’s arm. There would be time later, back aboard the Normandy, for Kaidan to whisper it to him again in the dark as they stripped the armour from each other’s tired bodies. “It doesn’t matter how they rebuilt you. You’re real enough for me.”


End file.
